Chapter 9
I ALWAYS WONDERED WHAT it would be like to see someone die.
Haven’t we all?
Would they just close their eyes, like in the movies, and look like they’re sleeping?
Would their eyes stay open, and unblinking?
Would there be any sound?
Turns out, it’s everything you ever imagined, and more.
It’s terrifying and helpless, a moment in time you can’t stop, even though everything inside you is begging for the pause button.
Iris doesn’t even open her eyes, not once. She lays there, a gurgling sound in her chest I will never forget. Her breathing is shallow, so shallow there are times my eyes fixate on her chest, fearful that it was the last. But she keeps on breathing, for a little while at least.
We say our goodbyes, praying deep into our souls that she can hear us. I wonder, are goodbyes for the person leaving, or for the people staying behind? It feels more for us, a selfish need to right our wrongs, to say our sorries, to express everything we couldn’t before.
Adrian is singing some melancholy song into the fire and is actually twirling in circles.
He said something about her sending her soul to heaven.
Nobody bothers to argue with him. Even when he lights up a palm frond and spins again, waving it around, sending little embers through the night, as he screeches some chant that makes no sense.
Seriously.
After that, all we can do is wait, and watch.
It doesn’t take long. She makes a croaking sound, a soft gasp, and her body jerks once.
Her fingers curl, spasm, uncurl. Then that’s it.
Not even a goodbye-breath, just the silence that follows, so loud and sharp the world rings with it.
Her body is so light, barely there at all, like she’s already put half of herself into the place she’s going and we’re the ones still clinging to what’s left.
Rachel snaps first. She folds, sobbing so hard her ribs must hurt, must crack, because the sound that comes out of her is guttural, from deep inside, ripped from her very soul.
Tatiana sobs too, but quieter, a pair of fists pressing into her eye sockets so she doesn’t see what’s right in front of her.
Aggie leans down, touches Iris’s hair, tucks the limp strands behind her ear.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, so faint I don’t even know if the dead can hear it.
I feel as though I can’t move.
Like my legs have forgotten how to work.
We just stand there, listening to the broken sounds of the people who loved her, and who came to love her.
After a while, Aggie turns to me, her voice raw and rattling. “What do we do now?”
I glance at Ace, who is standing dead still, eyes not leaving her body. His jaw clenches, then unclenches. It’s like he has forgotten how to move, too.
“I...Ace?” I croak.
His eyes dart up. “We find a place, just for her, and we lay her to rest.”
We have to bury her.
No one disagrees. We all know there is no choice.
Fighting does nothing, look at where we are.
It starts to rain.
Of course there would be no mercy from the universe.
It rains hard, fast, soaking the earth, us, the shreds of blanket we wrapped around Iris.
We carry her into the jungle, finding a space by the water, where we will lay her to rest. The guys use the paddles from the lifeboat, sticks, rocks, and anything else they can find to dig a hole.
We pitch in, helping, while Rachel sits beside Iris’s body, her hand on her head, as if she will just spring back to life.
It hurts. Every time I shove the stick into the dirt, it is a stark reminder of the path we are on.
Eventually, we have a hole big enough for Iris. My chest twists in a way that is a mix of agony and trauma. Ace and Zeke step forward, while Kellen pulls Rachel carefully away from Iris’s body as she whimpers no, over and over again. I don’t think I’ll ever unhear her cries of pain.
Zeke doesn’t look at her body as he lifts it.
Carefully, they place her in the hole. Then, they begin to cover her up.
We just stand in the downpour, mud, salt, and rain streaking our clothes and bodies, and we watch as she disappears.
Inch by agonising inch, her body becomes one with the earth.
Tatiana sings. Her voice is thin, but it cuts through the rain.
Rachel has nothing left to give. She just presses her hands to her mouth and rocks, eyes squeezed shut.
Once they’re done, we find some wildflowers and place them on her grave.
Then, we stand and we stare, broken and empty, not sure where we go from here.
Adrian appears with a large bundle of flowers he spent the last hour collecting, and he strolls past us and kneels down, placing them on her grave next to ours. “Fly with the fairies,” he murmurs.
Oh, Adrian.
“Where the hell do we go from here?” Aggie says, but it’s not really a question anyone can answer.
“We keep goin’ the way we already have been, we don’t give up, and we don’t stop. We fight for survival,” Ace rasps. “That’s what she’d want.”
We clean up as best we can, and then Zeke scoops Rachel up into his arms, and we go back to the camp, leaving our friend behind.
That’s a sick feeling, and one I never want to feel again.
Once we’re dry, we huddle around the fire, all of us shivering from the damp, the cold in our bones.
The air is empty in a way I’ve never felt before.
No one eats. No one talks.
We all go to our beds, the night dead silent.
I can’t sleep, and I roll from side to side, over and over again.
Eventually, I move, without thought or intention.
I just move.
I step over bodies and find his bed, where he is on his side, the flicker of the firelight dancing across his tattoos.
The way I need him right now, scares even me.
Dropping to my knees in front of him, I carefully lift his arm and slide in, pressing my chest to his.
He’s warm, and masculine, and he smells like the ocean.
He shifts, a sleepy growl leaving his lips as he hauls me closer, capturing my leg between his.
His lips are only millimeters from mine, and my heart is racing so hard it feels like I might actually pass out.
I don’t say anything. What is there to say?
Instead, I kiss him.
It’s the only thing that feels right.
He tastes like rain, salt, and something wild, and I am so hungry for it.
His stubble grazes my mouth and my cheek, his hand locking across the small of my back so fiercely that it reminds me I’m real and alive.
He jerks me impossibly closer, and I let him, my arms wrapping behind his neck, my fingers digging into the muscles at his nape.
My lips are warm, against his, and I can feel the way his breath hitches as the kiss deepens.
I can feel, too, the way his whole body tightens and then melts around me, the contradiction of force and surrender, like he’s afraid of how badly he needs it.
He crushes my mouth beneath his, and I dart my tongue out, reckless, desperate, just to see what he does.
His hands are everywhere, skating up my ribs, down my hips, palming the back of my thigh and dragging my leg further into his.
He is all muscle and heat under the blanket, and I can’t stop touching as if my hands need to catalogue every inch in case the universe tries to steal him, too.
I break away, but our lips remain so close it is hard to think of anything else.
“You okay?”
His voice is that sexy, half sleepy, raspy sound that makes my body jolt.
“I don’t know how to be okay anymore,” I whisper.
“We’re gonna make it,” he murmurs into my ear.
I turn my face into the hollow at his neck and let my tears soak him. He rubs my back, a simple steady rhythm, and for the first time in what seems like days, I fall asleep. Not just a light, restless doze, but a deep, forgetful sleep. One where the world stops, and nothing is real.
But it is real.
In the morning, the world will still be broken.
But for right now, at least, I can hold the pieces together.
WARM LIPS TRAIL ACROSS my collarbone, and slowly rouse me from sleep.
My eyes flutter open when his warm mouth nips at my flesh, and his hand, not gentle, glides over my bottom.
We’re both on our sides, our faces close enough for his beard to scratch my shoulder, his arm a hot steel band around my ribs. For a heartbeat, I forget where I am.
I don’t want to remember.
Ace nips at my skin, soft at first, then with his teeth.
I should stop him, I know that, but I can’t.
I’m not sure I even want to.
If he can make me forget everything, just for a second, I’ll take it.
He slides his palm up my back, then higher, and I arch because I need the contact, even though I shouldn’t.
His mouth finds mine, and he kisses the breath out of me, lips on my mouth, my cheek, my jaw, my throat.
His hand finds my breast and cups it, thumb flicking over my nipple, and all my panic drains away—nothing left but want.
I don’t want to be someone else. This is the only feeling that makes sense, the only certainty.
I reach for him, shivering as my hands find skin, the slope of his back, the hard muscle at his shoulder, the heat between us.
I push my thigh between his legs, and he grinds against me, his cock hard against me, aching with a need I know he feels just as much as I do.
His hand slides down, finds the hem of my shorts, pushes—he wants them off, I know, but we’re tangled in the blankets so he just tears them to the side instead, rough and fast. I gasp and his mouth closes over mine, swallowing it. “Quiet, baby. We don’t want anyone to hear.”
Baby.
My entire body jerks with a need I don’t even try to understand.
He shifts on top of me, knee between my thighs. I can feel the rocks and sand through the blanket, but I don’t care, I only care about him, the heat, the way we fit together like we have done this a hundred times already.
“Please,” I whisper, hating how desperate it sounds. I want him. I need him.
“You sure?”
I answer by grinding against him.